{"id":25887,"date":"2025-03-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=25887"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:39:34","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:39:34","slug":"tac-v2-06","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2025\/03\/27\/tac-v2-06\/","title":{"rendered":"TAC V2 06"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As far as I can recall, this is the beginning of a really terrible phenomenon that continues to somehow get worse today. If something\u2019s happening in a Marvel movie, the comics try to reflect it. I guess you could argue it was the revelation of Wolverine\u2019s past in the terrible, boring miniseries Wolverine: Origin that was first. Marvel staffers are on record saying they felt they had no choice but to finally reveal Wolverine\u2019s real backstory. They thought it might happen in the movie X-Men 2, and if they let the movie give him a history, they\u2019d \u201cbe stuck with it.\u201d This makes no sense at all to me. None of the movies perfectly mirror the comics. Why would they be bound to the movie version of Wolverine\u2019s origin when they weren\u2019t bound to the plot, the costumes, and so on from the movie? Never got it, but that sort of mentality takes bitter root at Marvel. In this case, because everyone knew Doc Ock was to appear in the upcoming Spider-Man 2, it was time to start pumping out Doc Ock-related content. He needed to appear in one of the monthlies, but he also needed to appear in superfluous miniseries, one-shots and reprints. A full-court Doc Ock press. This was how they did it in the 2000s. You crank out a ton of product vaguely related to the movie, made by people who are just guessing what might happen in said movie. By 2023, it meant killing Kamala Khan and resurrecting her IMMEDIATELY to reveal she was a mutant the whole time because her TV show revealed her to be a mutant, forcing the best new Marvel character of the 21st Century into the most mercenary, cynical, off-putting fake death I\u2019ve ever seen. Kamala was \u201cdead\u201d for a month. A month! Real-time, not even comics-time, comics time she was dead for, like, 48 hours, max. And for what? No one reads comics. Making Kamala a mutant isn\u2019t going to get you any sales, it\u2019s just going to make your actual readers sit through a crappy stunt \u201cdeath.\u201d Ugh. I\u2019m still mad about it. Anyway. Spider-Man 2 means Doc Ock is back, and he\u2019s got a new look, and it sucks so bad. So bad. This month\u2019s trainwreck opens with a bunch of snarky narration explaining who Spider-Man is as he arrives home and becomes Peter Parker, who STILL ISN\u2019T BACK WITH MJ, as he enters his apartment and finds it full of this book\u2019s zombie supporting cast, as well as this new Big John guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter is looking slightly more human under Ramos\u2019 pencil this month, but everyone else still looks insane, got it. We shift our scene to some building somewhere where someone is tinkering with electronics, and that turns out to be Doc Ock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then we\u2019re suddenly back to Peter\u2019s place. This is some very quick cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This video game scene has a real \u201cwritten by guy who doesn\u2019t play video games\u201d vibe. One-page cut to the Daily Bugle, where Robbie is trying to convince JJJ to cover a delegation from Palestine visiting the UN, but he\u2019s not into it. Remember the Daily Bugle? I like those guys. Shame to see them like this. Cut back to Peter for a beat that only makes me more confused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why, look, it\u2019s allegedly beautiful model-actress Mary Jane Watson-Parker, not looking at all freakish and inhuman!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, that conversation made zero sense. She \u201cstopped by his place?\u201d Not THEIR place? Are they meant to still be living in his crappy apartment? Ugh, who even cares. Spectacular reads like an alternate reality, and thanks to the art, sure looks like one, too. Later, Spider-Man is swinging around, thinking things are going pretty well for a change, and being drawn in such a way that in the first panel, he looks like he\u2019s about to smash into the ground because he swung too low. He asks himself, if things are looking up, why does he feel so cold? This question gets a whole splash page for some reason. Then: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There he is. Alright, so Doc Ock is already known to be wearing a long coat in the new movie. And green tights were never his best look, so sure, put him in a coat. WHY DOES HE LOOK LIKE A VAMPIRE!?!?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hey, this is weird, I finally get to say something nice about the art. That bottom panel has some really good energy, despite the weird Spider-Man figure. Ramos is good with Ock\u2019s arms. How about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yeah, the arms are something that actually work in his style! Ock delivers a typical Doc Ock speech about how he doesn\u2019t understand why Spider-Man has always been such a problem for him since he\u2019s smarter and stronger, and talks about what the best way to catch a spider is. As he snaps Spidey up and smashes him into a wall, he says he\u2019s made his arms \u201cten times stronger,\u201d which\u2026 ok. They were already pretty strong. He tells his injured foe that he\u2019s added many new features to these new arms, and once again demands Spider-Man unmask in public. Our guy refuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What\u2019s Ock up to this time? I don\u2019t know, but I know this stupid vampire look will hang around for an absurdly long time after this story is over. It\u2019s not great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As far as I can recall, this is the beginning of a really terrible phenomenon that continues to somehow get worse today. If something\u2019s happening in a Marvel movie, the comics try…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[1979,25,12,308,1270,21,1911,24,2088,2,2027,1978],"class_list":["post-25887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-caryn-earle","tag-doctor-octopus","tag-flash-thompson","tag-glory-grant","tag-humberto-ramos","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-paul-jenkins","tag-randy-robertson","tag-spectacular-spider-man-vol-2","tag-spider-man","tag-studio-f","tag-wayne-faucher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25901,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25887\/revisions\/25901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}